Genesis 2:4-23 Paradise Sept. 7, 2008
Isaiah 11:1-9 The Rev Dr George Hermanson

This past April we had a continuing education event with Rita Nakashima Brock on her new book Saving Paradise. It was a transformational event for those there. She offered images of paradise as focused on this world, in this moment. Paradise is a worldly spirituality, a metaphor that can enliven our Christian faith.

Our modern world does not talk much about paradise. If it does it often is about some place we go to after death. Paradise has not been a metaphor we use to enliven out daily life. At the most, we might use it to speak of a really good vacation. This summer, when the weather was good, as we swim we often comment on how this feels like paradise.

Or you may be formed by the events of the late sixties - remember the Joni Mitchell song - we have to get back to the garden. It was a romantic image that called us to care for our world. It was a yearning for a world that cared for our environment, as she sang: they paved over paradise and put up a parking lot. They took all the trees /Put'em in a tree museum/ ... That you don't know what you got "˜tilt's gone. These songs reminded us that we were losing something in our rush to build commercial artifacts. When re-listen to these metaphors it reminds again about global climate change yet how we can sing yet not be changed by what we sing.

Yet within our history of singing we have movements that used the idea of paradise as a transformation of our world. Listen to some of the African/American gospels. We can hear them as if this world is not important- it is heaven we want. That is not how they worked. The idea of paradise stood in sharp contrast to what the singers actually experienced. And the metaphors reminded them that this is not how it should be. Heaven should come down to this place. Our world should reflect the meaning of paradise. The singing lead to social change and to civil rights movement -where they wanted the experience of paradise to be now, in this moment, here.

The singers took seriously our readings today. Genesis and Isaiah "claim that our world is a paradise. When God created the heavens and the earth and everything in it, everything, God created paradise. God created paradise for human beings to live in and have as their home.

And in Isaiah's vision of the peaceable kingdom, all beings live in harmony and peace. together. It is a dramatic vision of beauty and abundance and welcome. And it can become a vision of renewal and purpose for the church in these times, our time, when paradise and beauty justice and peace can seem a long way off for our planet."

So where does this paradise come from? Paradise literally means garden. A walled
garden in Persian. The garden of Eden is the original paradise. Watered by four
rivers with trees and plants and animals and humans all living together. Isaiah's
vision of the peaceable kingdom links the garden of paradise with the kingdom of
God's Shalom - the reign of God's Justice and Peace.

In the Bible we have visions of paradise. The Song of Songs is about gardens, paradise, desire and love. Solomon's gardens were legendary for
their variety, and beauty and fragrance. Jesus promises the thief that he will be in a garden, in paradise.

When we read the bible from this perspective, we begin to notice how dominate is this paradise theme as the kingdom of God here and now. It is in the stories and parables of Jesus. They were about gardens and gardening - figs, grape vines, mustard, even weeds.

The theme of gardens, of paradise, of the kingdom of God, is woven throughout the scriptures, inviting and calling us to bear witness to God's good creation and to live it out - to live paradise in our daily lives.

The first dominate images of the early church was the idea of paradise. It was not some future event. It was a reality now, into which one is baptized.

Baptism was your ticket of admission. Think of that, you entered paradise at your
baptism. In our baptism we now live out of a changed nature and our character is to live paradise in this world.

We are unconscious of how this image of baptism into paradise is part of church structures. For churches were built to replicate paradise. When you entered a sanctuary you literally crossed the threshold of ordinary everyday life into paradise.
If you visit churches that use mosaics or icons, you will see how the sanctuary was decorated to replicated that paradise described in Genesis and Isaiah. In the early church were images of the resurrected Jesus who represents that the kingdom of God is for this world. One image that one sees is Jesus standing on the world and tree of life flowing down, supporting and holding this globe, watering it, caring for it. A youthful, resurrected Christ reigned as shepherd.

Worship and images were to remind us of the original good creation of God, of God's kingdom, to strengthen the faithful to resist the evil that they found around them in their ordinary lives. Worship was an experience of paradise that was so vivid that no matter what happened during the rest of the week - even the escalating violence and persecution by Rome, the very real fear of economic collapse and foreign invasions - would not cloud your vision or erode your faithful witness to the reality of God's paradise as our true home. And that true home was here and now, not some future reality. Because of God's providence the future was not to be a worry.

The idea of some future paradise was only to remind that there is work to be done now. It is the job of the christian to help live out of the image of paradise so that it is incarnated in history and our material world.

We may have missed this point over time, but it still there in our hopes for this world.... we resist paving over paradise because we know this is a good creation.
"And God saw that it was good.". Baptism is our ticket of admission into paradise. And our task is to bear witness to the truth of God's kingdom of peace and justice and goodness and beauty by the way we live in our world - a world that is full of persecution, fear and worry. Christ calls us to be witnesses to paradise. We are called by our baptism to care for the world and all its creatures because it is the creation that God loves. It means doing something as everyday as tending our own gardens, our own little patches of paradise and valuing up all the good in we find in what we have done. It means doing everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint and slow down climate change. It means caring for the poor and disempowered, for they are part of God's paradise.

Perhaps the toughest part of our work as Christians, as witnesses to God's
goodness and beauty is simply to say to a world that is skeptical about the very existence of God, to say God loves the world and desires its well-being.

We affirm there is a reality that is a transcendent reality that we call God and that God is in this world, part of this world, feels this world. We also affirm that we make a difference to God and that God values up the goodness we do. And we go further. We claim that we are living in paradise, in the kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of, right now. This assurance can free us to live in abundance, generosity, compassion, peace, delight and joy. Our spirits cannot be quenched by the troubles, ills and fears of the present age for we are nourished by water from the rivers of Eden. That is the gift of Christ we claim through our baptism. So go out and experience God's paradise, the beauty of God's creation. Play, celebrate and do what you can to bring more beauty and goodness into your part of our garden home. Amen

Thanks to Suzanne E. Sykes